SOUNDS
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Ralph, Albert & Sydney

Sounds-1979




RALPH, ALBERT & SYDNEY
SOUNDS
Articles
1972-1979

SOUNDS
Ralph Mctell & Mary Hopkin at the Royal Festival Hall, London
May 20th 1972

Jerry Gilbert, 
'Sounds' 

It was a night of family pride at the Festival Hall on Saturday, firstly when Tony Visconti saw his Wife Mary Hopkin close her set to a tremendous ovation and later on when Ralph Mctell brought his young son sam up on stage to help him bring a memorable concert to its conclusion. 
Miss Hopkin was backed by a string quartet conducted by Tony visconti and the set was kept nice and light with the inclusion of a few husband/wife onstage jokes. Mary's singing was almost frighteningly pure and the highlights of the set were "Ocean Song", "If I fell", on which she dueted with Tony, "Those were the days", a song which has matured considerably, and Ralph McTell's "Streets of London".
And so for probably the first time in his career, Ralph didn't have to fall back on this song himself.
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SOUNDS
LIVE SOUNDS
Ralph McTell
Royal Albert Hall
SOUNDS
February 9th, 1974
by Jerry Gilbert

RALPH McTELL'S first Albert Hall performance - which looked to be a sell out or very near - gave hints of the kind of problems which McTell poses for himself.
In the final analysis the concert was very warmly received and if the performance was just a fraction low key, then it was deliberately so. But as the only British singer songwriter to rise genuinely through the ranks in the good old rags to riches tradition, he is still overly conscious of preserving chunks of his past. He is still clad conspicuously in old denim and delights in loosening up with a few musician friends. At the Albert Hall he called on stalwart Danny Thompson to assist on double bass for the latter part of the show, a move that added little to the evening musically (in spite of the excellence of Thompson's playing) but it seemed to give Ralph some self-justification for being there.
Ralph's new compositions fall generally into two brackets - sentimental and goodtime - the former best epitomised by 'Sweet Mystery' and 'Summer Lightin'", the latter by the closing number a dedication to "Uncle Willie" McTell an updated version of the old ''Somebody's Been Borrowing That Stuff".
McTell came back for a couple of genuinely deserved encores played "Streets of London" and "Hesitation Blues" with the same self-effacing grace. But the fa
ct remains that he should not be making any apologies for having become a star.
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SOUNDS
Straight Shootin’ Ralph
Sounds
By Phil Sutcliffe
Date: mid 70s

Concluding a week in which Geordie eardrums had been rocked by the over-reaching talents of Floyd and Tull, the simple guitar and voice of Ralph McTell was, to say the least, a contrast.  From a peak of excitement which had been like joining the tight-rope walker on the high-wire, you had to come way, way down before you realised that McTell’s music wasn’t feeble just because it didn’t strut, stomp, whirl and swirl.
For Ralph McTell was practically perfectly himself, and his audience loved him.  Pleasant and skilful guitar, voice hitting attractive bass notes and lilting around the melody (strangely like Ian Anderson’s in fact).  He’s gentle on your mind and, you are tempted to say, soft.  But that’s not right.  His one lapse into schmaltz, the single “Streets of London”, highlighted the plain strength he puts into his other honest romances.
“First Song”, which he sang last, seemed the tasteful counterpoint to the single’s sentimentality.  A short, lovely melody and the chorus stopping at “and I still . . .” every time until the last verse when he completes it with “love you”.  You might call it delicately obvious and there’s a lot of pleasure in that.
Ralph McTell doesn’t have the range of a Tom Paxton in heart or head but he’s a straight shooter and his fans seemed to value old-time adjectives like “sincere
”.
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SOUNDS
Ralph McTell

Sounds
Date : 29th March, 1975
Author
Barbara Charone


Ralph McTell still rolls his own cigarettes, drinks shorts with his beer, wears the same well worn denims and faded shirts that made him an underground university legend five years back.  Riding the train up from London to Glasgow for an evening show at the Apollo he is quiet and apprehensive, gazing at the passing world through windowsill vision. His luggage is a crumpled brown paper bag with a clean shirt and a smile.  Success has only changed his audience.

Six hours later, McTell is one concert older and one award richer.  The theatre manager presents him with a statuette, a thank you for an unprecedented three shows at the Apollo in thirteen months.  “Streets of Glasgow” someone shouts down from the balcony but the hit single is curiously absent from that evening’s programme.  A large chunk of solo material forms the crux of the show but it is a departure for McTell carries with him a five piece band, a definite attempt to move out of the restricting confines of being labelled a folkie.

But to the fans clamouring outside the stage door he is no more a folkie than any other lyricist they take to heart. Autograph books and shouts of ‘Oh Ralph give us a kiss’ are out in force. A mother, more exited than embarrassed follows her daughter in the queue just to say thanks.

McTell has come a long way from the days he worried about developing dynamic tension, dreaming of a Charles Atlas physique. Nurtured on muscleman paranoia, the same man that wouldn’t take off his shirt at the beach, grins sheepishly at the female throng gathered outside the stage door. “If I was only 18” he murmurs, “this sort of thing used to happen in my fantasies.”

Passionately
“I want to get rid of that image,” McTell complains in the hotel bar after the show.  “I was never a folkie.  Don’t get me wrong, I love the music, and the influences are there, but I am not a folkie,” he repeats passionately, “I’ve never played folk music and I never will.”

The recent addition of the band on tour has been years in the making.  Not until “Streets of London” leapt up the charts did McTell feels the personal confidence to allow himself growth.  How many artists set out on a nationwide tour aided by the strength of a fresh hit single only to ignore it in concert?

“I haven’t done the song for half the tour but I don’t need to do it.  They’re not coming just for the song.  In the beginning they told me to expect the teenybopper kids and I had a sickly feeling, but,” he says, a frown turning to a grin, “they didn’t come, it’s mostly the same old fans.  I’m sure we disappoint some people by not doing the single but I think I can afford not to.”

The reason for the song’s exclusion is no calculated audience manipulation but rather a deep rooted fear within McTell of being dishonest to his initial hard core following.  He dreads becoming a jukebox for people who don’t care.

“The song got to number 7 and they said do the Lulu show.  That was a mistake, I did it without thinking.  I did it at the expense of Ralph McTell.  Those kids that have followed me for years must feel cheated.  You pride yourself on the fact that you admire an obscure artist, you spotted him, you feel he’s your own personal property.  I mean I’ve had letters in the past that said, ‘I’m glad you’re not famous’, and I’m sure those people feel slightly cheated.

“That’s why I’m desperate to have another hit just to get away from ‘Streets’.  If I were to set out to write a hit I couldn’t. It’s nice that the follow up single, ‘El Progresso’ was written before ‘Streets’ was a hit, but,” he adds with jaded emotion, and a slight alcoholic buzz, “I don’t give a fuck.”

Typical of McTell’s working class image, he stuck out like a sore thumb on ‘Top Of The Pops’, sandwiched between all the satin suits and stacked heels, between the Barry White disco hits and the latest RAK release.  His one concession to pop star fame was accepting a new pair of trousers, no denims, from Warner Brothers’ promotional man, Bill Fowler.

“They all come on TV so relaxed that you don’t realise how much they believe in it all, and how bad they want it to happen all those acts with their combed hair and pressed suits.  You ought to see it.  I mean, even Elton John, who cares what they smell like?” he throws up his hands in confusion.  “All that powdering and showering.  I turn up and they said, ‘This is a DRESS rehearsal’ and I said ‘I’m wearing it’ and I thought I looked smart! They told me to smile but it’s not exactly a happy knees up song is it?”

The type of everyday loneliness that filled McTell’s picture of London streets still confuses him. Success has only added to the confusion, forcing him much like an illness to sit back and relax.

“I’ve enjoyed it all, the whole trip’s been great. It’s cleared debts to the record company, made them treat me differently, given me a future, but now more than any other time I must not be hurried. I need to think, to re-evaluate what has happened.  It’s roughly a decade now since my first professional gig,” McTell reminisces sombrely, gazing at just another hotel bar, “I’ve got a house and a car but my artistic development was being stilted in favour of a money making thing.  You go through this depressing cycle, album / tour / album.

“I’ve got to take time out or I’ll go mad.  I’m not going to tour England for at least a year cause when I do I want to come back with something new, something different.  I’ll probably go to America for a while and just be a nobody again, with no one that knows I had a hit,” he says as if it’s a disease.

“I’ve never gone onstage and thought it was just another gig.  I’ve worked hard but I’ve had no fun out of it, no real fun like those university days. I can’t believe what the media say I am cause I’m not. I suppose in the early days I went along with that underground image, gave them what they wanted, but I’m just a working class bloke who writes emotional, caring songs.  The press calls them sentimental but they’re not. All I want to do now is escape from what I was and try to be who I am.”

McTell has come a long way from the days ex-manager Jo Lustig (everybody’s favourite ex-manager) tried to turn him into a ‘male Julie Felix’, but his brother Bruce took over helping regain honesty and integrity.

“Bruce and I were talking last night and we said ‘What are we doing this all for?’ I’m not going to make another album until I can make one that can be played by anybody without them going ‘oh fuck, another folkie’. What happens is that you become a machine. ’12 songs a year Ralph’,” he mimics bitterly.  “I could never write a song just because someone needed it, and as the years go on it becomes harder to write because of the pressure of that album / tour cycle.”

To alleviate the boredom, pressure and frustration, McTell chose to add a band to his present tour during the height of his solo popularity. Despite mixed reactions he considers it a step forward in a career he desperately wants to progress.

“About three years ago I wanted to do a tour with a band but every time the problems seemed insurmountable. I always wanted to be the band, THE BAND, and now I’ve finally got the players, these people play. No demon guitar player, we’ve got a fiddle player, Mike Piggott, a lovely bass player, Rod Clements who plays bass, not frustrated lead guitar, and an American drummer, Danny Lane who can capture the feel first time through.

Hostile
“Of course I was worried about losing some of my original following but I had to do it.  We had some hostile reaction in the beginning and my initial reaction was anger. Things like, ‘on yer own Ralph’, but we changed the set and worked it out. It would have broken my heart if people walked out.

“It’s been a great learning experience. If I had toured any other country where they didn’t have a conception of me as a man with a guitar, then the band would have been able to grow together. We can’t now. I’m sure it’s frustrating for the band only doing about 7 numbers but I want to please the people that want to hear me on my own too.”

Slightly disillusioned with success, McTell is retreating to the States, not to avoid tax or save money, but just to save his sanity, to re-value the past and present in order to decide about the future.

“The job I always enjoyed most was working on a building site. I was fit, felt great, I had my beer, I was well adjusted playing guitar for the pleasure of it. That’s where it all started.  I need that time again. I’ll go to the States and call myself McRalph, knock about with Danny’s friends. Lots of people talk about it and never do it and they have nothing to lose. I have a damn well lot to lose but I’ve got to do it. I’ve got to break the mould.”

Right now big, double-decker buses cruise up and down the streets of London with the face of Ralph McTell peering out from their backside, clutching his hand rolled cigarette, and looking towards the future. I don’t know what the future holds for Ralph McTell but you can bet he’ll still roll his own cigarettes and carry on stage shirts in crumpled brown paper bags.
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SOUNDS
The Return of Ralph McTell
Exclusive Interview by Barbara Charone
Sounds 
1 November 1975

It’s a brisk wind that blows across the Thames this crisp autumn evening.  The night air in Putney crackles, sending a pre-winter chill through your body.  Revived by the piercing weather conditions you seek solace in a nearby pub.   Sitting unobtrusively in a corner with a pint of Special for company, Ralph McTell looks just as ordinary as the rest of the Duke’s Head clientele.

Well-worn denims, tattered old shirt, a motorcycle jacket with holes sticking through the leather, offset by a rather large grin.  The Duke’s Head is Ralph’s local and it’s easy to understand why he feels comfortable within these warm, sturdy walls.  There is nothing very show biz about the pub.  Nothing remotely close to any kind of Top Of The Pops consciousness.  Well, maybe the old geezer propped up against the bar likes to watch Pan’s People, but that’s it.

Ralph McTell doesn’t much like Top Of The Pops either.  His foray into the top twenty last spring cost him his sanity.  Success has made a curiously adverse mark on McTell.  Rather than embracing all that glitters, he shied away from white Mercedes limos, post concert champagne celebrations, and adopted a hermit-like existence.  Seven months ago McTell said goodbye to a career that finally peaked commercially with “Streets of London”, insisting on keeping a low profile.

He has succeeded.  Unlike other contemporaries who yell ‘I quit’ only later to capitalise on shock, sensationalist press, McTell stuck firmly to his promise to retire for a year.  Riding high on the crest of a hit single, every performer’s dream, McTell felt the confines of his folk-image jail imposed by a public that only wanted to know from a guy that soothes lonely hearts with acoustic accompaniment and a nice smile.

“I suppose I write myself off,” Ralph said of his unusual predicament.  “I was so fucked up at the time I decided no more live work.  I’d run out of ideas, and I worried about the band, about me continually going down better on my own.  That tour was a chance for me to expand and nobody wanted me to.  Everybody wanted to keep me taped in that folkie bag,” he made an ugly face to illustrate his distaste for the category.   “Everything I tried to do, especially having a hit from an old song, worked against me.

“When I said I was retiring from live gigs I meant it,” he bangs the table making his tobacco bounce.  “I felt like a great weight had been taken off me.  I immediately went to Cornwall and moved about 20 tons of earth with a shovel and a wheelbarrow.”

By the end of his last tour, McTell painted a portrait of frustrated agony.  Friends who had known him for years hardly recognised pent-up aggressions that began to flow as smoothly as the beer on tap.

“I’ll tell you how bad it got before I went to the States, how strung out I was.  One night on tour I was very irritable, we’d had sound problems, I was tired, so I went back to the hotel and smashed the whole bar up because they wouldn’t serve me  drink.  I could really feel myself wired up, the rush of adrenaline was consuming me.

“The barman was up to his knees in broken glass.  Someone at the other end mumbled something and I offered to have him out.  It was the chief of Police!  I got away with it in the end and just paid for the damages,” he flashes an innocent grin.  “But it was a great relief.  It brought the guys in the band around if they had any doubts about how I felt about the tour.”

Suddenly peaceful attitudes of acceptance towards whatever came his way disappeared.  McTell became easily enraged.  He’d pass a guy in a pub who would mumble something off-hand about ‘Streets of London’, something negative about ‘bloody Ralph McTell’.  Tendencies to ignore similar situations faded away.

“For too long I sat back and was a nice guy,” Ralph says passionately.  “I’m not saying I’m gonna start breaking guitars on stage but I know who I am and I will not take direct insults anymore.  I used to excuse everybody.  Someone would say ‘Oh your music is a load of shit’ and I’d say ‘OK lovely’.  Once at the Paradiso in Amsterdam someone stopped me after a set and said, ‘Hey man that’s fucking terrible, really awful’ and I said Thanks a lot,” McTell relates the incident in disbelief,  “I always thought I shouldn’t say anything, just be cool and never react.”

Artistic frustrations and aggressive inhibitions began to explode at alarming rates, reaching a boil with the top ten success.  Feeling claustrophobic in his folky closet, McTell was determined to get out.

“The thing about Putney”, he says, glancing fondly at the people in the Duke’s Head, “is that it’s brought out who I really am.  I never knew before, which caused a certain amount of confusion.  There I was sitting in my council flat writing all those early songs that I travelled round the country with for years, but coming here I’ve seen the other side of me and my music.

“I’ve neglected this side for so long”, he sighs.  “I didn’t have anything as violent as a drummer on my first four records, just plenty of cymbals, and if we had a drummer they’d mix him down.  Singing soft with meaning is just as heavy as shouting.  Look at people like J.J. Cale and Dr. John, they don’t shout, they just growl away.  There’s violence and intensity there.

“I was making music without a certain amount of violence, aggression, without BALLS!  Right?  I was trying to make it all so smooth and easy, so lacking in intensity”, he says it like a terminal disease.  “I got muted in the fucking studio half the time because there’s an audience of two and the engineer yawns and pushes the phasers up.  You see it in a live situation but you need to capture that on record.  That last album was a gigantic step for me.”

While the album was a step forward just like taking a band on the road, the single success was ironically a step backwards, forcing McTell into a corner that’s virtually impossible to escape from.  The challenge that makes music filled with genuine urgency began to crumble.

“If I hadn’t gone to the States when I did, I don’t know what would have happened to me”, he says with conviction and desperation.  “It brought me down to have a hit with an old song because I think I’ve written better songs.  After a while I began to think, what should I do now, maybe there’s a hit on other albums, and then I just stopped,”  he clenches his fist into a ball.  “I was afraid.  I’d try working on songs but nothing seemed good.  I didn’t write to have hit singles.”

Unlike other artists who flock to all the most expensive shops when the money finally comes in, McTell felt uncomfortable with sudden fortunes.  Driven by an old fashioned sense of integrity, he’s desperately afraid of losing touch with his audience if he moves from a comfortable terraced house to a larger, flashier place.  The last time Ralph McTell bought a pair of jeans they were four quid, now priced £10 he is amazed.

“I’ve only just developed a business sense.  It’s amazing.  I’ve made money but I can’t even be persuaded to buy clothes.  It’s inverted snobbery really,” he reflects.  “I want to stay where I was.  I wrote ‘Streets of London’ living in a council flat.  I should move to a bigger house now, in a plush area, but I really want to keep things funky because I really believe that will keep the music with the people.  Luxury to me is a couple of pints here.

“If you live that sheltered existence you write songs about how hard it is living on the road, why doesn’t anybody understand how rough it is in this hotel suite with lots of money?  I don’t want that.  I can’t feel overburdened by money.  If I did it would be the absolute end.  When I think about the Rolling Stones’ urban street scene on stage with their mansions in the south of France and their wives dressed by the best fashion designers and those poor little rag ass kids that come to their gigs”, he stops for a quick breath, “well, it’s kinda hard to take.”

McTell doesn’t profess to be a working-class hero, nor does he consider himself perfect stuff for an Earls Court bed-sit.  He idealistically longs for the day when he can transcend categorisation.

“People have never thought of me as a working-class kid that’s made good.  Most of my audience is probably more middle class.  Roy Harper is a better working-class hero of the acoustic world than me.  See I think I cut across.  You never examine why you’re successful because if you know why, you begin to exploit it.  The essential thing is to keep doing what you believe.  I couldn’t do anything that I wasn’t proud of.”

Cruising along at a nice, comfortable but strictly safe pace, McTell began to lose pride in work that the audience demanded methodically.  ‘Streets of London’ hit big and wiped away any chance of breaking out of preconceived moulds with Top Of The Pops energy.

“It was too easy.  Eight years easy.  I was just rolling along, each record I made sold a little more than the last, the concert scene grew steadily till I began to sell-out, but the last couple of years I started to get disillusioned, doing the same songs over and over again.  I knew I should do new songs but they didn’t want to hear any new songs.

“I just want people to listen to the music not the image I represent, and with me it’s a safe image.  I’m stuck with that folky image,” he spits the word out like a bad taste in his mouth.  “I don’t think I’ll ever be known for anything else in Britain.  The easiest thing to do would be getting up on stage and doing a really perverse, uncommunicative act – but all you’d do is lose friends.  I’ll just have to continue to grow but I’m setting my sights on America.”

Tired of seeing his own face on bus backs and nationwide TV, McTell fled to America, wallowing in anonymous glory, grateful for a chance to be accepted or rejected for what he did rather than who he was.  He says he would have gone crazy if he didn’t make the American sojourn although the first few weeks were equally depressing.

“At first I raised my spirits by the glassful,” he laughs, remembering the pint at his side.  “I used to literally sit there like these guys are now.  You know the scene in those singles bars.  Give us a beer and a shot of old gold.  Disco music pounding out of the jukebox, Barry White stuff.  Real drunk couples slurching round the dance floor.  The only way you meet people is talking to them otherwise you just sit there and get drunk.  So I sat there,” he grins sheepishly, “and got drunker and drunker.  Suddenly I thought what the fuck am I doing?”

He was, of course, falling deeper into another depressed state. Finally he began to play with drummer Danny Lane who had toured here with Ralph.  Danny introduced him to a bunch of LA pickers called Trashy Kenny and the Dogshit All-Stars.  There were some sessions with country and western man Red Rhodes.  Musical rejuvenation began to consume him in positive proportions.

“I started going to the clubs nightly seeing bands.  Those rhythm sections are so tight!  And the lack of star consciousness is beautiful. It’s not like ‘listen man, I’m too wasted.’  It’s more like ‘fuck you if you don’t want to play, we’ll get someone else’.  That attitude is great.  I came out of those clubs with a grin on my face that I usually kept locked up till I got to the pub on Sunday lunchtime to see the Trad band playing.  Nobody worries about who’s in the audience.  They just play.

“Sure people said, ‘C’mon Ralph what’s with the forced modesty?’ But it was like sitting in because they liked the way you played, not who you were.  A lot of those American musicians have so much soul.  It’s hard to explain to an English musician.  We’re all so fucking intense and precious about it,” he was getting passionate now, “it’s not precious, share it as long as the song lasts.”

The American jaunt was the necessary stimulus that prodded Ralph into a productive period again.  No sooner had he arrived in Britain again, his record company began talking about releasing a newly recorded version of an old song, ‘Let Me Down Easy’.  It was that ‘Streets of London’ syndrome all over again.

McTell quickly snapped back into reality.  Realising the obvious advantage mentally and artistically of releasing something representative of his work now, he quickly and easily wrote and recorded ‘Dreams Of You’ which has excited the people at Warner Brothers with the same enthusiasm that surrounded ‘Streets’.

“This new song, I’m proud of,” he says with genuine bravado. “At least if it’s not a hit the blame is only 50% mine, cause I nicked the tune.  It’s one of those tunes you find yourself singing.  They used to play it at school assemblies, ‘Jesu Joy Of Man’s Desiring’.  It’s a love song that brings back memories of someone far away.”

The song, like several others, was written and recorded within a brief two-week span, a new McTell achievement in lieu of lengthier writing and recording sessions.  Again he attributes the situation to recent American influences with the emphasis on spontaneity.  Next month McTell goes back to the States to begin working on an album, taking advantages of friends like Trashy Kenny.

“I want to put an album together that’s better than anything I’ve ever done.  I still find the hardest thing writing words.   I could play guitar all day but if the lyrics get too complicated you begin to wonder is it poetic enough?” he laughs cynically.  “Who listens anyway except for a singles audience?  An album should just be music.

“It does worry me, doing the album.  I WANT to record, I’M READY,” he was surging with excitement now.  If only the Duke’s Head had a studio out back.  “I’d love to just go in and play.  Half these guys write songs in the studio and here’s me polishing off the edges.  You can castrate a song that way.  ‘Dreams Of You’ is one of the quickest songs I’ve ever written.

“I want to get it down where I can write the song in two sittings and if it doesn’t come out then it’s not ready.  From now on I want a simple direct approach.  No songs over 3½ minutes.  Take a leaf out of Randy Newman’s songbook.  Two minutes and it’s all there.  That’s where the craft comes in, getting it down to the fine point where it just flows.  I want that American rhythmic sound so I’m setting my sights on fresh ground.”

Before he ventures back into the recording studio, McTell will temporarily break his onstage silence with one singular appearance.  His choice of venue is about as unorthodox as his attitudes to the music business.  Certainly one major London concert would stimulate excitement and interest but McTell wants to play in Belfast at Queen’s College, and these days Ralph McTell does things the way he wants to.

 “I’d like to tour Britain but I’ll see how I feel after the Belfast gig on November 9.  I’ll just have to work consciously against the pressure.  There won’t be any of that ‘Oh Ralph we’ve got to promote you, hit the radio stations, hit the media’.  No, not for me this time,” McTell grins.  “I’m gonna take a little bit of a star privilege and say no.  I’m relaxing now.”

But what happens if the single hits big?  No doubt demand from the record company and the public would be strong for an album and a tour. 

“Well,” Ralph announces simply, “they won’t get one.”

 Outside the Duke’s Head the wind began to howl.  The river looked dark and uninviting.  The autumn chill cut sharply through your jacket.  Putney pubs were doing good business.  Down the road, good-natured jigs blasted out of the Half Moon.  McTell wandered in and quickly ordered a pint of Special bitter.  He sat and began tapping his foot, looking just as ordinary as the rest of the Half Moon clientele.
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SOUNDS
Old Folkies Never Die Dept. Ralph McTell (and Al Stewart)
By Robin Katz
Sounds  18 December 1976

“How long can I go on, if the ‘rebelling’ university audience I play to grew up learning my songs in secondary school?  I’m up against myself as part of the establishment!”

Hot on the heels of the belated success of ‘Streets of London’, Ralph McTell packed his bags and band and headed for the streets of Los Angeles.  He suffered a bad depression, drank too much, wrote too little and wondered how long he could pretend he didn’t have any money.

Then, like the fog which rolls onto the Thames and eventually retreats, McTell came to see the light again.  ‘Dreams of You’, half McTell, half Bach was a minor hit during a dry writing period.  In January McTell went to the States to start an album with Shel Talmy.  Recorded and mixed twice, the album included tracks by Tim Hardin and Randy Newman.  McTell didn’t like the end result, and canned the expensive lot.  He started all over again, looking for something less slick.

Now with nine new songs, plus a version of Tom Waits’ ‘San Diego Serenade’ and John Martyn’s ‘May You Never’, Ralph McTell has returned.  The new album, for all you clown faces is called ‘Right Side Up’.  The title also capsules the current mood of its sensitive creator.

“I’ve realised that I’ve been persecuting myself unnecessarily for years now” said an almost astonished McTell.

“All my life I’ve been paranoid about every song I’ve ever recorded.  What if I made a mistake?  Did people understand what I was trying to say?  For years I lived out in a council estate in the middle of nowhere.  I did five albums there and was only half aware that I had a family life.  Some people believe I did my best work there.  But staying there wouldn’t have I’d continue to.

“We now have a great big empty house in Putney and three kids.  I’ve come to realise how important and precious my family are to me.  But I’m not worried about losing anything.  An artist essentially needs to have an antennae stuck out to find what people are into.  By being closer to London I’ve found a lot more stimulus.  My friends are still the people they’ve always been, used car dealers, buskers and people I meet in pubs.  I still get off on just people.”

One of the things that McTell has always “gotten off” on, which has worked in a mutual circumstance, has been university gigs.

“I love ‘em” says McTell without a breath’s hesitation.  “I’m a scruffy performer.  I don’t have anything about me that could be loosely termed as an ‘act’.  I sit down and rap with my audiences and play songs.  When I first started, I felt very self conscious.  I didn’t even have A levels.  I wondered what the hell I was doing up there talking.  But it seemed to work and now I look forward to it because it’s so refreshing.

“But if you think about it, ‘Streets of London’ is ten years old.  It’s being taught in primary and secondary schools.  Now when you get out of secondary school, you want to kick against everything you grew up with.  How long can I continue to go on, if the ‘rebelling’ university I play to grew up learning my songs in secondary school?  I’m up against myself as part of the establishment!”

 

Ageing is an inevitable part of the human process, but as Sly Stone once sang it, ‘Dying young is hard to take, selling out is worse’.  In the eyes of those who equate folk singers with troubadours who play acoustic guitars and starve, McTell has not only committed the gossiping sin of denying his calling as a folkie, but has achieved commercial success.  (His views on 101 ways not to be a folkie were chronicled on these pages on Nov. 1 1975.)  The ideal of selling out has made the now stable McTell’s good nature go sour.

“As soon as ‘Streets’ became a hit the word went out, ‘Oh, now that Ralph’s had a hit he’s going to start putting out singles’.  I didn’t do that.  I went to thinking of my old fans, my old loyal fans.  I know how fickle the singles business is and I couldn’t see, then or now, which way I could possibly go because I write songs that aren’t supposed to be commercial.

“The follow up to ‘Streets’ was a flop, which I told the record company when they insisted on releasing it.  ‘Dreams of You’ was a small hit but I can’t follow it up in the approved manner, that is, I can’t sing it live.  I’ve never done it on stage because there’s no room to breathe.  When we recorded it, I stopped and restarted the tape between verses.  When people ask for it on stage, I just have to say ‘sorry’.

On the other hand, there’s a single coming off the new album called ‘Weather The Storm’.  I’m proud of the album and I want people to know it’s out.  I’m talking to you because I want to fill in the gap.  I didn’t have a nervous breakdown, though times were rough.  But when you come close to slipping, you learn to recognise the symptoms and if things get too pressured you know how to deal with them.

“If ‘Weather The Storm’ becomes a hit it won’t worry me.  I’ll know how to handle it.  But if it becomes a hit I’ll be accused of selling out again.  I’ve come to realise that there will always be people who see me as selling out.  Tough!  They can find themselves another hero.  For eight years I was a bunch of people’s private property.  No one else knew about me.  They played the albums to the exclusivity of most people.  Now that lots of people know about me, it’s no longer exclusive.  Therefore I’ve had to have sold out.  It makes me angry.”

‘Right Side Up’ is the first album which McTell finds is “more subjective than objective.  But that’s all right” he notes peacefully.  “Most people start off writing that way and several of the songs on the album serve to narrate what I’ve been up to.  ‘Weather The Storm’, even without its new single status stands out as the collection’s most infectious and compelling saga.  McTell sceptics will be impressed by the optimistic message curled throughout the verses.  The song relates not only to McTell, but to several of his mates whose raw deals have battered their hopes, as Streets’ success almost battered Ralph’s.  “It’s the first manufactured song I’ve ever written.  The phrase ‘weather the storm’ came up, so I just tacked it onto the tune I’d already written and that was it.”    
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SOUNDS
RALPH McTELL
'Ralph, Albert And Sydney'
(Warner Bros. K 56399)***
by Dave Laing.
SOUNDS
October 1, 1977

IN THE days when rock journalism was just another office job, record reviews were usually just a couple of lines and variations on a few formulae. One of my favourites was "A must for the fans, but may not make many converts". Writing as a fan myself, I suspect that such will be the fate of this live album culled from Ralph McTell's 1976 concerts in London (Albert Hall) and Sydney.

Which would be a pity since, once you get past the fact that 'Streets Of London' (one of his least distinguished songs) gets the biggest applause, this album is an excellent introduction to the range of McTell's work over more than a decade. The lilting, nostalgic love songs are here: 'First Song', 'Let Me Down Easy' and 'Grande Affaire'. They are counterbalanced by three from the 'Not Till Tomorrow' album which showed a new depth and insight in his writing: the elegiac 'Sylvia' (for the poet Sylvia Plath), the deceptively jaunty 'When I Was A Cowboy' and 'Zimmerman Blues', delivered with a passion which sums up McTell's decidedly healthy attitude towards the star system.

Live albums have always been a rather dubious concept, but this works as well as any. The sound is immaculate, and the necessary applause is compensated for by Ralph's elegant introductory chats. A must for the fans.
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SOUNDS
“McTell, the silent one, gets back on the road”
Sounds
b
y Garth Pearce

Friday March 30 1979

When success suddenly demanded that Ralph McTell act like a star, talk like a star and dress like a star, he decided to do something about it.

He went to America, booked into a motel and didn’t speak to anyone for three weeks.  Then he took nine months off.  No follow up records.  No big tour.  Silence.

Yet Streets of London was the most popular Number One of the year, his record company was forecasting a rich future and television had turned him into a national personality.

That was three years ago.  Today, McTell, who’s about as level-headed a singer that you could meet in the neurotic music business, sips pints of bitter over a solid lunch of roast beef and explains “I felt that my audience believed that I’d sold out.

“After years of building up a following and loyalty from clubs all over the country, I could feel them thinking that I’d turned into a rock ‘n’ roll star.

Confused

“After spending so many years on the road and never selling out as regards my image or integrity I became confused with the whole business.  My morale dropped to its lowest point at the time, I nearly quit altogether.

“I was so screwed up when I booked in to that motel – and I decided the best thing was to spend time by myself, thinking of where I should be heading.  It was not, definitely not, a good time for me.”

Ironically, McTell is not the sort of man to give in to artistic whims.  He admits today that the reason for his behaviour seems rather fragile, but then it’s that special relationship which he has developed with audiences that makes McTell so distinctive.

He started out busking cinema queues in Paris, developed with a club residency in Cornwall, then trod water during five years living in a council flat from where he toured Britain in an ex-Post Office van which he bought for £45.

In 1970, he filled the Royal Festival Hall on reputation alone and throughout the decade has produced ten albums and successfully toured America, Australia and Europe.

Now he’s 34 and has just started what he calls a ‘get back to the people tour’ which runs until the end of May.  A new album called ‘Slide Away The Screen’ does just that.  It reveals a fresh and recommendable collection of McTell material.

“I must have done more than 2,000 concerts now, all over the world,” he says, “but each time I go out I fear that this might be the night they stop liking me.”

McTell has a Norwegian born wife, Nanna, whom he met in Paris when he could barely afford the price of a meal.  They have four children, aged 12 years to 11 months.

McTell now has the luxury trappings which go with top-selling records and sell-out tours.  At one time he lived in a £50 caravan in Cornwall, now he owns a house with another in London.

Award

“But we spent five of the most miserable years of our lives in a council flat, because we were saving so hard to get a place of our own.” he says, “And I spent a year at a teacher-training college to get an alternative profession, in case my singing did not come to anything.”

We return to Streets of London which among other things won an Ivor Novello Award and is now being used as a set piece for guitar tuition in many schools.

“In retrospect, I was wrong to act the way I did after that success,” he says, “what ever I do in the future – or whatever I don’t do – I will always be the man who wrote Streets of London, and that is like a heaven-sent gift.”
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